Long, long ago in a county far, far away I received a December telephone call from a just-elected member of a county Board of Commissioners. The caller was a retired cop who succeeded in his second bid for public office. Several years before, he lost a brutal battle for sheriff to a candidate with more public support than personal or professional common sense and knew full well he would never be able to beat this former colleague / friend who turned into something of an enemy. Being a commissioner was his consolation prize for never, ever becoming sheriff.

Anyway, the reason he called on this early December morning was to ask a question. He wanted to be chairman of the board, had to do some political engineering to accomplish it and was interested in what the newspaper might think about it, editorially speaking. Because he dealt with the media a lot as a police officer, he knew me fairly well. And in those days I wrote a lot more often about local politics than I do now.

Insert line about “the time to put away childish things” here.

So when he asked how the newspaper might view his bid for chairman I answered very directly.

“We don’t care,” I said.

“Huh?” he responded in surprise.

“We don’t care, not even one itty-bit. That chairman thing is y’alls’ deal, not ours,” I answered. “The chairman only has one vote like any other commissioner and he or she is elected by county voters just like any other board member. The chairman is just someone with a gavel and a copy of ‘Robert’s Rules of Order’ is all.”

And even though I know it’s slightly — but only ever so slightly — more complicated than that, I didn’t add anything more to the conversation. And the new commissioner in question went on to be one of the worst chairs of any politically elected board I’ve seen before or since.

But the newspaper still didn’t care one wit, except for one thing. Meetings went from two hours to nearly five under this chairman’s watch. Not good for our deadline. Seems this particular politician had a very circular way of talking and not enough self-awareness to gavel himself to shut the heck up.

But ultimately, it still wasn’t much to make editorial hay about because who’s in charge of a local government board is really all about its members, how they interact and very little else. Sometimes it might impact the way a discussion proceeds, but in the final analysis, few in the public take much real notice at all.

And yet, newspapers cling to the antiquated idea that this annual exercise over who might be the next chair is the most significant local government matter that will occur all year — even though we know better. The Times-News did the same old thing this year, too.

Page 2 of 2 - Old habits, it seems, are hard to break.

The reason is pretty clear. It’s easy for the media to become hypnotized by loud and cantankerous political machinations because it’s the most visible and easy thing to cover. It’s difficult to boil down Alamance County’s financial maladies into a 500-word story that all can understand. It’s much simpler to throw political spitballs at just-elected Commissioner David Smith’s secret plan to cure the county’s money shortage, a proposal he said he would reveal after winning election, Of course, when he unveiled his plan last week it turned out to be a bigger disappointment than the final episode of the old TV show “Lost.”

The problem with the media and politics — whether it’s covered by local, regional, state or national reporters — is put into excellent perspective today in a letter to the Open Forum by Ken Sellers. It’s on page A5 of today’s Times-News. While I wouldn’t endorse keeping the media out of political coverage — far from it in fact — I concur that political antics are becoming a sideshow in the American carnival and we’re partly to blame. We indulge the petty back and forth that has only further polarized a political process in which Democrats and Republicans have stopped listening to each other.

But in a larger sense it’s also problem across the board. Once again, I go back to a time long, long ago in a community far, far away. A person new to the area called my office. She didn’t understand why town elections were non-partisan. She thought the idea to be completely backward.

“How does anyone know who to vote for?” she asked.

The answer, I thought then and now, seems obvious. Start by paying attention to what’s important.

Madison Tayloris editor of the Times-News. Contact him by email at mtaylor@thetimesnews.com. Follow him on Twitter @tnmadisontaylor.